All over town this weekend, on overpasses and chainlink fences along the freeway there were hand-lettered signs "The war is a lie." and "Bush Lied". I've been seeing them for months now, but it seems there was a concerted effort to add new signs this weekend, as there were more signs in the afternoon than in the morning along the same freeways.

These signs are highly amusing to me. Along with their partners "Impeach!" Impeach who? Yo Momma? Seriously. Finish your thought, ADHD child. Of course, some of the signs DO say Impeach Bush, but I have to ask, why? I mean, the man has about 6 months left in his term. How much of that time is actually useful political time? ZERO. And how long would it take to go through an impeachment process? Probably more time than he has left as President. Get off it.

But the "lie" meme perseverates. And congress commissioned a study of the available intelligence to determine whether the President actually lied. Senator John D Rockefeller led the Select Committee on Intelligence in this investigation. In a statement Thursday, the senator announced, "In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent[.]"

But is that really what the report says? Not really. Clearly the information at hand was overinterpreted, aka SPUN, into the message that the Bush administration wanted to present. Probably in an effort to convince the American people to get behind the push to war in Iraq.

However, the report finds that in many circumstances, and on a variety of subjects, the President's (and other administration officials') statements on the war "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates." These subjects include Iraq's nuclear weapons program, biological and chemical weapons capability, overall WMD capability, and support for AQ terrorists.

Which to me, raises a very important question, namely, How did our intelligence get so far off base? Did our operatives buy into the lies that scientists and supervisors were passing on to the regime? Or did the CIA et al. deliberately mislead both the Clinton and Bush administrations? Where is the actual failure, then? If the President is essentially parroting what the intelligence community tells them is fact?

So then what can we do with this knowledge, that our intelligence is, at best, flawed? How do we use it to plan and implement strategies for dealing with our enemies and their plots to thwart us? Knowing that such critical intelligence may be wrong makes it extremely difficult to build support for military endeavors, regardless of the import to national security.

Which brings me back to lying. Which is the lie then, Sen. Rockefeller's statement that the report finds that "Bush Lied", or the actual text of the report which shows that the intelligence community "lied" and Bush and Co. believed them?

h/t Babalu

Posted by: caltechgirl at 10:53 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 495 words, total size 3 kb.

1 Very logical train of thought... something I'm not capable of lately. I know what you mean about the intelligence... but I still believe that it was not wrong. Hussein had plenty of time to disperse/bury, etc... they have found huge weapons caches buried in the desert... and large quantities of ricin. How much is enough I guess is what I'm asking...

Posted by: pam at June 09, 2008 01:37 PM (l6NIn)

2 That's a damn good point. How much is enough to count as "enough"?

Posted by: caltechgirl at June 09, 2008 01:38 PM (IfXtw)

3 sorry to go way off topic, but please consider yourself tagged

Posted by: wRitErsbLock at June 10, 2008 05:01 AM (+MvHD)

4 They also found a number (several hundred, as I recall) chemical warheads. And last I checked, that is not equal to zero.

Posted by: Ken S, Fifth String on the Banjo of Life at June 10, 2008 08:32 AM (Yh9SA)

5 Think it could it have anything to do with the lack of human intel that former Pres. Clinton got rid of?

Posted by: NAVY CPO at June 11, 2008 10:29 AM (sGtp+)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

When Linda O'Boyle wanted just a few more months with her family and chose to pay out of pocket for a drug that would work against her colon cancer and allow her to do that, she was dropped from Britain's National Health Service coverage:

Mrs O'Boyle was operated on in January last year for colon cancer and the doctors found it had spread to her stomach lining.

The former NHS assistant occupational therapist, who has three sons, twins
Gerald and Anthony, 37, and Mark, 33, as well as grandchildren Luke,
four, Finn, three, Jemima, two and Darcey, two, then had six weeks of
chemotherapy.

She continued with this until September last year when she and her husband were told the devastating news there was little more doctors could do.

However, her consultant recommended Cetuximab, which could extend her life. But it is available on the NHS only in Scotland, not in England and Wales.

It is one of many medicines the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence denies to some patients because of cost.

Mrs. O'Boyle's decision to take it meant she and her husband had to spend £11,000 over two months for care from Southend University Hospital HS Foundation Trust.

Mr O'Boyle, an NHS manager for 30 years, said: 'I think every drug should be available to all of us if there's a need for that drug to be used.

'I offered to pay for it but was told I couldn't continue with the treatmentwe were receiving at the hospital-The consultant was flabbergasted - he was very upset.'

He added: 'I was always very anti private treatment. But everything she had wasn't working and it was a last resort.

'We were lucky we had the money, it's the people who have no recourse to it that struggle. It is wrong that they are denied the chance.'

Mr. O'Boyle, who said he was convinced the drug had extended his wife's life by three months, added: 'If these guidelines were changed it would be a wonderful legacy for my wife.'

Medical experts say the ban on co-payment is one reason why Britain has one of the worst survival rates for cancer in Europe.

Cake Eater Kathy lays it all out.

Nice, huh? A lifetime of taxes to pay for a health care system that actually employed this woman and her husband, only to be betrayed in the end because she was willing to pay out of pocket for a few more months on this Earth. She wasn't looking for a cure. She knew that was beyond her. She was simply looking for a palliative treatment which could extend her life a bit. Just a bit.

She was asked, "How badly do you want to live?" And she replied that she wanted just a few more months with her family. She paid the price for a drug that wasn't available under universal healthcare, and she did it gladly, only to be smacked with a frozen mackerel in the end. Her actions would create a "two tier" health care system, and that, apparently, cannot be allowed, because that would mean she wasn't receiving lowest common denominator health care, like everyone else does with the NHS, and the NHS cannot stand that. She thought she had the right to choose what her healthcare was worth to her, and that she wasn't going to be penalized for her decision. One would suspect, with universal healthcare, that that would be a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

And yet this atrocious system is what some people would have us install here in the US. This is what some people want because their health insurance premiums are too high, and they would prefer not to have to pay them, but would rather let the government run things. It's tidier in theory, but absolutely disgusting in practice.

Again, how badly do you want to live?

Governments with nationalized healthcare systems don't want to give their citizens a choice. Patients are blackmailed, ultimately, into going with the lowest common denominator treatment if the the choice is between that or nothing at all because they don't have spare millions on hand to pay for private care.

But Kathy says it better than I ever could. She has lived it. Go read about what Universal healthcare means for Ovarian cancer patients in Europe compared to the treatment she recieved here in the US. It's shocking and frightening. Definitely something to consider as we go to the polls.

Posted by: caltechgirl at 11:58 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 839 words, total size 5 kb.

1 Oh, my God. That poor woman and her family... and they worked for the system! I know little to nothing about socialized medicine, but I know I don't want it.

Posted by: pam at June 02, 2008 01:52 PM (l6NIn)

2 thankee, darlin'.

Posted by: Kathy at June 02, 2008 06:46 PM (qPNVr)

3 Ban on co-payment? That's sick. No wonder my uncle (second-cousin's husband) in England died - all they did was give him morphine and say, "Go nicey-nice to a Hospice," -they're disgusting.

Posted by: DirtCrashr at June 03, 2008 09:27 AM (VNM5w)

4 THAT is why I have a problem with the idea of universal health care. Because it rapidly morphs from "safety net for people who are badly off" into "Everyone gets the same minimal standard of care because that's the only thing that's FAIR." In other words: why the hell should anyone work hard or save up money, maybe against some kind of medical emergency, if they're going to be told they get kicked out of any future benefits because they want to use THEIR money for a different/better treatment. (This will also KILL any innovation in treatments - there's no incentive to try new things if they're not "approved" by Mama Government.) If they proposed this kind of system, for, say, food - where everyone's issued a pound of kind-of-crappy hamburger, a couple cans of green beans, and a jug of Kool-Aid a week, everyone would be up in arms. Why do people want it with healthcare? (The other thing that scares me about universal healthcare coming here? I have aging parents. I sure as Hell do not want to be told, "Well, there's a treatment that could ease their pain and extend their lives, but we can't use it." Hell no. You want to see me throttle a doctor, and then go and throttle politicians? That would do it.)

Posted by: ricki at June 03, 2008 09:28 AM (O5SYw)

5 Everytime I hear these healthcare horror stories and how bad ours is, and how much worse it is elsewhere I can't help but wonder - Is there ANYPLACE in the world that has a workable healthcare system? Are there ANY solutions out there to improve ours and put the brakes on rising costs? Is is possible to find a solution that'll use the best of both worlds and make most everybody, if not all the people, happy? Just something I think of when I hear about the problems with our healthcare system. I hear a lot of griping, a lot of arguing, but few workable solutions to fix it.

Posted by: diamond dave at June 03, 2008 09:55 AM (EKSJf)

6 How about this scenario., hardworking mom, a receptionist at a strip mall dental office m-f and a museum guard on the weekends. No medical insurance. Where does she go when in pain? Got any ideas? Try county, take a ticket, no chairs so you get to stand. Takes the whole day to do so which puts said woman at risk for loosing her job. Often, by the time she's diagnosed, she's in deep sh@#$t. hell, lets lay it on thick, she's diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer. Are we crying yet? please..my best friend died of ovarian cancer. She was a teacher for the LA Unified school district and although insured, she discovered that at UCLA, reputed to have the best care, (which she paid for out of pocket), those with money were those that received good care. If thats the case what do you think happened to our dental receptionist?

Posted by: royal pine at June 03, 2008 10:45 AM (Bby3r)

7 "...it is available on the NHS only in Scotland, not in England and Wales." Tangentially, this is also one of the many reasons why the UK may be headed for a breakup, and soon. On this subject generally, I always go back to what P.J. O'Rourke said about it: "if you think health care's expensive now, just wait until you see how much it costs when it's free."

Posted by: Dave J at June 03, 2008 07:27 PM (glamO)

8 royal, its a shame many of our government run County hospitals are utter disaster areas, but is the solution really just complaining that rich people get better treatment and should instead get equally sh*tty treatment? Wouldn't it be more reasonable to leave the parts of our medical system that work alone and focus on fixing out government run County hospital disaster zones?

Posted by: the Pirate at June 04, 2008 08:28 AM (73P68)

9 Unbelievable!

Posted by: Lauren at June 04, 2008 12:09 PM (iUfJz)

Hide Comments | Add Comment